Why I Joined The Dispatch

Hi! I’m Esther. Declan and I show up in your inbox every weekday with The Morning Dispatch. 

A few weeks ago, I wrote an update on rising COVID-19 case counts, and Declan suggested we stick in a link to the government webpage where you can order eight more at-home tests. (It’s here, in case you missed it.) We did, and I didn’t think anything more about it until a few days later when my mom mentioned she’d clicked the link and ordered tests.

I’m a reporter because I want to help give readers the information they need to be better citizens, neighbors, and people. I want to seek the truth and speak it. It’s pretty neat when that means I end up helping my mom keep herself healthy.

But hey, I could link to COVID-19 tests at most any news outlet, and the Powers That Be have asked me to explain why I’m at this outlet, in this role. That’s pretty simple: The Dispatch is directly pushing back on the partisan spin and information firehose that have undermined trust and exhausted readers.

My whole “help people be better citizens, etc. etc.” thing only happens when readers believe what they’re reading. I’ve stood with my notebook and press badge in a crowd of protesters screaming for journalists to “do your job” because they were too disillusioned by bias and confused by misinformation to know what to believe. At The Dispatch, we tell you where we’re coming from, and we strive to keep our viewpoints out of the way of the facts. (When your mom reads what you write, you make sure it’s true.)

It’s also hard to get the information you need when it’s buried in an ever-increasing spew of the inane and irrelevant—some of my good friends have shrugged and quit reading the news altogether because they’re overwhelmed by the never-ending carousel of push alerts and livestreams. At The Dispatch, we look past the hot headlines to stories that matter and put them in your inbox. And in The Morning Dispatch specifically, Declan and I boil down all the day’s news to just the essentials—plus a few dumb jokes for good measure. 

The free edition of TMD has the day’s top headlines and highlights, but the members-only version includes more reporting and context. Last week, we sent free readers the members-only edition, which included extra reporting on the census, the Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific policy, Georgia primaries, the horrific shooting in Uvalde, and China’s oppression of the Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities. If you found what you read helpful as you tried to live well in this world, well then, mission accomplished. 

And if you want to support this type of reporting and ensure we keep doing it, I hope you’ll consider becoming a Dispatch member. I mean, my mom did, and she likes it—what more do you need to hear?

See you in your inbox, 

Esther